An insurance investigator named Morrow (Hugh Keays-Byrne) travels to the small Australian hamlet of Clematis to get to the bottom of a mysterious death before his company will shill out a payoff and close the case. He quickly realizes nearly everyone in town is a quirky old fart as he has bizarre encounter after bizarre encounter with the citizens of Clematis. To make matters worse, everybody Morrow talks to seems convinced the death was caused by the local superstition, a ghost train. Surely, a loco locomotive can’t be the reason behind all this… can it?
This set-up is similar to The Wicker Man with an outsider making his way around a small, strange community. It’s also a bit like Twin Peaks and/or U-Turn as just about everyone in town is a weirdie. Are they acting odd because they’re hiding something, or are they just naturally nutty?
If you only know Hugh Keayes-Byrne from his villainous roles in the Mad Max movies, you might be taken aback by his comedic chops here. He has a Chaplinesque quality to him as he bumbles and stumbles around town having strange interludes with the wacky locals. While the film sometimes strains a bit to be off-the-wall and quirky, Keayes-Byrne takes to the Monty Python-style gags like a duck to water. (I liked the bit where he rents an apartment that has an oversized bathroom.)
This was made for Australian TV, and it suffers from some pacing issues that are inherent in the medium. Your mileage may vary when it comes to some of the townsfolk’s loopy behavior, but the atmosphere is genuinely bizarre and memorable. The premise is solid, the mystery is engaging, and it’s lots of fun, which means you should definitely grab a ticket and climb aboard The Death Train!
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